The German "Rinderpest" is
the English euphemism for the murrain knownas cattle plague. The name hides the
desolation wrought by a disease thatravaged cattle herds domesticated in
Asia 8-9000 years ago. The Englishname "steppe murrain"
reflects the belief in Europe that its homeland wasthe steppes between Europe and Asia
from where waves of rinderpest sweptwest to the Atlantic and east to the
Pacific in the retinues of maraudingAsian armies.

The secret weapons of the invaders
were Grey Steppe oxen. Their valuewas a strong innate resistance
manifested by slow spread of virusand by the absence of clinical
signs. A troop of Grey Steppe cattlecould shed rinderpest virus for
months provoking epidemics thatdevastated buffalo and cattle
populations of the invaded countries. Thesequelae were no transport, untilled
fields, starving peasants, andoverthrown governments.

Rural Europe was laid waste
constantly until the 18th century when thenumber of deaths in the Papal herds
so alarmed Pope Clement XI thathe instructed his physician, Dr.
Lancisi, to prescribe measures for thesuppression of the plague. Lancisi
concluded that it was " Bovillapeste" and recognized that it
was a contagion. [Thus, the disease was caused by
"exceedingly fine and pernicious particles that pass from one body to
another."] His recommendations forits containment are still valid.
[Lancisi's recommendations included slaughter to reduce
spread, restricted movement of cattle, burial of whole animals in lime, and
inspection of meat.] The penalties for transgressors weredrastic; guilty laymen were hung, drawn
and quartered and guiltyecclesiastics were sent to the
galleys. The [Papal] edicts were not popular but theirapplication rid Romagna of
rinderpest. Elsewhere in Europe rinderpest wasendemic being fanned frequently into
point epidemics by a continuum ofwars.

The pandemic hit England in 1714 in
cattle shipped from the Netherlands.Thomas Bates surgeon to King George
I, was commanded by the LordJustices to ascertain the plague’
s nature and to effect its control. Bates, having been stationed as a naval surgeonin
Sicily,was familiar with Lancisi’s edicts. He applied them without
the draconian penalties, introducinginstead a policy of indemnities.
Bates’s campaign eradicated the diseasewithin three months to the
astonishment of continental countries where theravages continued unabated.

Rinderpest re-entered England in
1745 in trade stock from the Netherlands.Bates’s was still alive but
memories are short and his methods and irateepistles were ignored. The Privy
Council in 1749 admitted their failure tocontrol the disease which burnt
itself out having killed half-a-millioncattle.

The massive losses of cattle in
France induced the Comptroller General of Financesto found a veterinary school to
train a cadre to control animal diseases.The school, the world’s first,
opened in 1762 in Lyons and within a yearthe trainees were applying
Lancisi’s principles. Within 16 years most European countries followed suit.
Only England held back.

The seminal event of the 19th
century was of the introduction of steam power that enabled theshipment of live cattle by rail and
sea in numbers previously impossible.The sequel was inevitable: in 1857
to 1866 Europe was denuded of cattle.Britain did not escape. The Cattle
Plague of 1865-67 was a nationaldisaster. The virus came with the
first trainload of Asiatic cattle to reachthe Baltic port of Revel from where
they were shipped to Hull in thesteamship "Tonning."
Within weeks the disease was out of control. No onein the Privy Council thought to
check their archives as to what happenedin the previous century. Stockowners
wanted cures but the failure ofmedical cures changed the climate of
public opinion and a "stamping out"policy was introduced that
eradicated rinderpest within months.

The epidemic led to the
establishment of a State Veterinary Service in 1865,albeit
200 hundred years
behind mainland Europe. The VeterinaryService was tested twice in the
1870s when infected cattle were shippedfrom Hamburg.
Both
outbreaks were contained within weeks. Since thenthe British Isles have been free of
rinderpest.

In the 19th century
Europeans were empire building in the tropics. Theyappeased conquered stockowners byestablishing veterinary departments
to curb losses. For example, when theBritish government took firm control
of India they recalled Col. J. H. B.Hallen, thePrincipal of the
Royal Veterinary College, to lead theCommissioners appointed by the Viceroy
to Inquire the Origin, Nature, Etc.,of Indian Cattle Plague. They
identified Indian murrain as being the sameas European rinderpest and estimated
that the annual loss was in hundredsof thousands. They recommended a law
be enacted for the prevention ofspread of murrain, and considered a
veterinary school to be essential.There was no mention of Bates’s
eradication methods.

The Netherlands and the U.S.A.
respectively colonized Indonesia and thePhilippines in the 1870s and 1880s
and in the process introducedrinderpest from mainland Asia. The
epidemics were savage causing up to90% losses. Both invading
administrations were quick to establish veterinarydepartments yet both took 30 years
eliminate the disease.

The pandemic that changed the fauna
of Africa entered the continent in1887 at Massawa with Indian cattle
for the Italian army. The cattle wereinfected and the disease swept from
the Horn of Africa west to the Atlanticand south to the Cape of Good Hope.
The Ethiopians lost 95% of theircattle and most of the human
population starved to death. F. D. Lugardwitnessed its passage through
Maasailand in 1890 and he stressed thatno similar animal epidemic had
visited Africa within human memory. InLondon he pleaded for a veterinarian to be
sent to East Africa to report on thenature of the plague and its
remedies.

By 1896 large numbers of cattle and
wild ruminants were dying on bothbanks of the Zambesi River. Within
two weeks most of the cattle aroundSalisbury were dead. The plague was
diagnosed as rinderpest by Dick agraduate who was the telegraphist in
Bulawayo. He wired the ColonialVeterinary Officer in Cape Colony
who alerted states in southern Africa.

Chaos ensued ! At the end of March
the disease entered the South AfricanRepublic and moved on remorselessly
into Cape Colony and GermanSouthwest Africa in 1897. All
attempts to stop the plague by Proclamations,Days of Prayer, fences and slaughter
of sick animals failed. Novelprophylactic measures were tried and
were found to be wanting. Thedisease burnt itself out in 1905 but
it lingered on in Equatorial Africa and flared up in Kenya in
1907.

In the late 1980s the Indian
Government offered a " peace accord" to SriLanka whereby India undertook to
station an Indian Peace Keeping MilitaryForce ( IPKF ) in Sri Lanka to
assist the Sri Lankan authorities subdue aTamil Insurrection. The IPKF was
provisioned from India and the suppliesincluded live goats some of which
were visibly sick. Shortly, thereafter,rinderpest was diagnosed in local
cattle. It was not until 1999 that SriLanka could declare provisional
freedom from rinderpest.

Ever since Professor B. Ramazzini
[1633-1714] attempted to protect cattle from rinderpestin 1711 using infected setons,
murrain investigators have developed newprophylactic methods. One was J. T.
Edwards who in the 1920s fortuitouslymodified
rinderpest virus by passaging it serially ingoats. The line stabilized after 600
passages and proved to be attenuatedfor Indian cattle. Moreover, the
virus immunized for life. THIS FINDINGWAS THE BREAK-THROUGH IN THE
BATTLE TO CONTROL RINDERPEST.

Freeze-drying gave a powdered
vaccine with a prolonged shelf-life.Caprinized vaccine was not ideal. In
animals with a low innate resistance itinduced clinical signs and
occasionally killed when a latent infection wasexacerbated. Even animals with a
high innate resistance shed tears; a signwelcomed by
pastoralists.

As the fear of rinderpest declined
the demand for a safer attenuated vaccinearose. The problem was solved when
W. Plowright and R. D. Ferris grewthe virus in cultures of calf kidney
cells. By the 90th serial passage thevirus was stable, attenuated, and
non-infectious. The vaccine was cheapto produce and easy to assay for
potency and safety. It quickly became thevaccine of choice. Recently J.
Mariner increased the shelf-life to 30 daysat 300C by adapting it to
Vero cells.

In the past decade recombinant
rinderpest vaccines have been developed inBritain, Japan and the U.S.A., but
they have not been cleared for use.Their virtue is that the handling of
infectious rinderpest virus is totallyavoided. Regular routine
vaccinations have been stopped in all countries,except where a focal pocket is
contained and eradicated by movementcontrols and mass vaccination.
Plowright’s vaccine is the one that is usedbecause it protects within 3 days
through interference whereas recombinantvaccines need a 3 week advantage.

In the 1950s the strategy was mass
vaccination in your own country tocut the incidence of the disease.
For example, the All-India VaccinationProgramme was launched in 1956 when
the incidence was 60,002. In 1975the incidence was to 2,824. An
unexpected high incidence occurred in 1981provoking an emergency meeting to
assess progress. The strategy waschanged, fresh funds were obtained,
and vaccination was concentrated tohigh incidence States. Twelve years
later India was declared provisionallyfree of rinderpest in 1995.

The Inter-African Bureau of Epizootic
Diseases was founded in 1950 underthe directorship of W. G.
Beaton.
He, from the beginning, planned toeradicate rinderpest from Africa.
Heads of African Veterinary Services metin Kano in 1960 and welcomed
Beaton’s proposals to launch amultinational joint project (JP 15)
under the aegis of the Organization ofAfrican Unity. The aim was to
vaccinate all cattle of all ages in eachphase every year for three
successive years. Thereafter, each countryundertook to vaccinate all calves
and weaners annually. At the start 17countries had rinderpest and at the
end only two reported the disease.

A hidden focus erupted on the Niger
River (Sudd) and spread east along theSahel. Another focus flared up in
Sudan and spread west. Two millionFulani cattle sickened and half-a-million died in Nigeria. A dreadful sequelwas the high suicide rate among
Fulani headmen. The Sudan outbreak alsoinvaded Uganda and was taken to
Tanzania in cattle acquired by returningsoldiers. Tragically the virus
spread to wildlife.

The pandemic was so widespread and
virulent that Heads of State pressedO.A.U. to
organise a fresh
campaign. The Pan-African RinderpestCampaign began operations in 1987 in
34 African countries. In the 1990smost Equatorial countries were declared
provisionally free. Small focipersisted in war-torn Sudan and
Somalia. The latter focus spilled over intoKenya and Tanzania causing havoc in
wildlife, but not in cattle. The viruswas recovered from a single bovine
gum erosion and proved to be an oldAfrican strain virulent for wildlife
but non-fatal for cattle. A FAO EmpressProject vaccinated all cattle in
northern Tanzania and re-vaccinated themthree months later. Surveillance
checks confirmed that the disease waseradicated.

FAO organized a meeting in 1987 to
discuss the feasibility of globalrinderpest eradication. The sequel
was the establishment of GREP ( GlobalRinderpest Eradication
Programme)
backed by FAO, OIE, and IAEA becausethey believe the goal is achievable
in the foreseeable future.

Rinderpest's closest human relative is
the measles virus. They are negative single-stranded RNA viruses of the family Paramyxoviridae
and genus Morbillivirus. In Island Epidemics (2000; Oxford
Univ. Press) Cliff et al. classify measles as a "crowd disease" since,
for the virus to persist, there must be a pool of non-immune susceptible
individuals. In a small population, as on an oceanic island, immunity might be
widespread and the virus would then be extinguished. Over several decades the
entire island population would then become non-immune and hence highly
vulnerable to the introduction of virus from an external source.]

The last case was seen in
Kenya in 2001. In October 2010, the United Nations Food and Agricultural
Organization announced that it was dropping its field surveillance efforts
because it felt that eradication had been achieved. The
New York Times
(Oct 16th) pointed out:

"Still to be decided is how much virus to keep
frozen in various countries’ laboratories, along with tissue from infected
animals and stocks of vaccine, which is made from live virus. Virologists
like to have samples handy for research, but public health experts,
fearing laboratory accidents or acts of terrorism, usually press to
destroy as much as possible. The smallpox virus is officially supposed to
exist only in two lab freezers, one in Atlanta and one in Moscow."